美國怎麽會變得這麽慘？

慘，就是大家都去搶購，去囤積，結果美國如此富庶的國家形成物資短缺的狀況。

 

為什麽去搶購？當然是因為大家對國家的運作產生了懷疑。當人民遇到大型傳染病的時候，搶購囤積的心態是可以理解的，但這種現象不應當到如此程度付，這種程度不應當發生在美國。兩天前美國股市對政府宣布緊急狀態感到振奮，我覺得不可思議（ 國家介入，股市大振，美國是不是逃過劫難？），這幾天老百姓的反映體現了整個社會的真實心態：恐慌。你要是自由民主體製的絕對信奉者，此刻越來越多的人談“中國社會主義優越性”而懷疑美國政府的能力，才是你最大的恐懼。

 

美國僑民回國在機場的處境（中國僑民返京人也很多，也排隊，但分開的，有次序）

 

為什麽會出現這一局麵？

 

（《紐時》）Among the advisers who share the president’s more jaundiced view is his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who considers the problem more about public psychology than a health reality, according to people who have spoken with him.

 

說習近平身邊都是馬屁精，除了忠還是忠，（美國總統）淳樸（美國總統Donald Trump，人稱特朗普或川普）身邊也是如此。

Reading the stories today and it really blows the mind that the President’s 30something son in law, real estate heir, appears to be the WH official running coronavirus response.

— Susan Glasser (@sbg1) March 15, 2020

 

《紐時》的專欄作家David Brooks歎到：“淳樸是美國曆任總統在危機中最無能最束手無策之人。”有此想法的人多得是。

 

國家變得如此，淳樸不是唯一使壞的，美國兩黨的領導階層也許沒有中共那麽恐怖，但也是夠腐敗到頭了，尤其是共和黨老大精英們，絕對是隻顧自謀私利的一群人，美國的體製遇到淳樸這麽一個山大王，算是給自己找到克星了，哈，咱華裔也有一份功勞。美國政府的無能，是總統私利成了國策，而兩黨腐敗讓權貴操縱整個國家極其，進而導致體製失靈，最終讓百姓遭殃。

 

Since his first bankruptcies at end of 1980s, Trump's life has been dominated by one idea: what scheme/scam will keep his creditors at bay for the next 24 hours? That's the approach he's brought to coronavirus too.

— David Frum (@davidfrum) March 16, 2020

（此人是個狠心川黑）

 

中國政府處理疫情的有效性確實不能反映一個製度的優越性，一百年前世界經濟蕭條之後，納粹德國是第一個全麵恢複的國家，人民自豪，全球羨慕，二戰開打後德軍俘虜的英軍臉色蒼白銷瘦，而德軍個個臉色紅利透白，然而結果如何，大家都知道。美國也不是到了無政府主義的地步，但這幾年不斷地愈益回歸到反科學反理智的心態，在現代文明的環境這現狀是對整個世界既有觀念的衝擊，政府還有什麽值得信賴的？

 

看來我們快把中國的策略使出來了，現在隻是說得“高尚”一點而已

 

不說多的，就說美國政府現在還不能提供大範圍測試這窩囊，信心從哪來？

 

 

《華爾街日報》民調

 

還是說你要這樣的領導？

“If you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a great time to go out and go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easy. Let’s not hurt the working people in this country...go to your local pub” pic.twitter.com/jXdhOfwe9R

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) March 15, 2020

 

《大西洋月刊》的Anne Applebaum把美國現在空虛的底子接出來：The Coronavirus Called America’s Bluff

What it reveals about the United States—not just this administration, but also our health-care system, our bureaucracy, our political system itself—should make Americans as fearful as the Japanese who heard the “distant thunder” of Perry’s guns

 

“I am not writing this in order to praise Chinese communism—far from it. I am writing this so that Americans understand that our government is producing some of the same outcomes as Chinese communism”。

 

當美國政府失控了，才會成了這樣。

 

《金融時報》Global recession already here, say top economists

 

 

【後注】

中國政府如果真的想在中國和世界麵前贖回這次災難（前期）處理失誤的罪孽，首先要停止陰謀論，然後宣布每天出口一千萬個口罩，十萬個N95，和逐漸增加的其他醫療設備，如呼吸機，和適當排除醫務人員支持其他國家。

 

 

《金融時報》

The world economy has fallen into recession, suffering from a “wicked cocktail” of coronavirus and the dramatic action to limit its spread, according to four former IMF chief economists.

 

As the virus has spread from China to the rest of the world, economists no longer feel they have to wait for data to confirm the world is in recession, even though official forecasts remain more optimistic.

 

The former top officials agreed that addressing the public health needs was the first priority, but said that with a sharp downturn likely, governments should be preparing to spend significant sums to protect businesses and households.

 

Serving policymakers and officials have so far sought to contain alarm over the economic consequences of the coronavirus. Mark Carney, Bank of England governor, has declined to predict a UK recession while Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank president, said only that it would be a “major shock”.

 

Gita Gopinath, IMF chief economist, said it was hard to predict what might happen but that the pandemic did not look like a normal recession. Data from China has shown a much steeper drop in services than a normal downturn would predict for instance.

 

“There’s not an easy lesson,” Ms Gopinath said, adding: “This should be a transitory shock if there is an aggressive policy response that can stop [it] morphing into a major financial crisis.” The most affected sectors will be leisure amenities, tourism, travel, transportation, energy, financials Vítor Constâncio, former vice-president of the European Central Bank

 

She also said there was no reason why the economic effects of a health crisis should linger, in the way that long periods of slow growth have tended to follow financial crises as households and companies work off their debts.

 

But her predecessors at the IMF were less guarded in their assessment. Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor, said: “A global recession seems baked in a cake at this point with odds over 90 per cent.”

 

Maurice Obstfeld, a professor at University of California, Berkeley, said recent events were “a wicked cocktail for the global growth”. He added: “I do not see how, given the events in China, Europe and the US, you are not going to see a severe slowdown.”

 

Olivier Blanchard, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, said there was “no question in my mind that [global economic] growth will be negative” for the first six months of 2020. The second half would depend on when peak infection was reached, he said, adding that his “own guess” was that this period would probably be negative as well.

 

Raghuram Rajan, professor at Chicago Booth School of Business and a former Indian central bank governor, said the depth of any economic hit would depend on the authorities’ success in containing the pandemic, which he hoped would be decisive and rapid. “Anything prolonged obviously creates more stress for the system,” he said.

 

A long outbreak could also lead to a second round of consequences, where workers were let go and there was another fall in demand, eroding long-term confidence, he warned. “These kinds of effects — firms closing down — depend on how prolonged the first round is, and what steps we take to alleviate that first round. So it is up in the air,” he said.

 

The IMF defines a global recession as being when growth — normally about 3.5 to 4 per cent a year — falls below 2.5 per cent. Not all of the IMF alumni believe this definition is sensible in the circumstances but all said the conditions for a global recession were met regardless of the precise definition.

 

The IMF has said that the impact of the virus will be “significant” and that growth in 2020 will be lower than in 2019, which was 2.9 per cent.

 

To help offset the slowdown Profs Obstfeld and Rajan called for cash help to vulnerable households while Prof Blanchard said it was necessary to “prepare fiscal measures, including transfers and backstops to banks”. He concluded: “Do whatever it takes.”

 

Other economists were also clear that the economic effects of coronavirus will be serious. Vítor Constâncio, former vice-president of the European Central Bank, said: “The recession is coming from a demand deficiency and the disturbance on the supply chains. The most affected sectors will be leisure amenities, tourism, travel, transportation, energy, financials.”

 

He continued: “[It is] possible that banks’ risk aversion and lack of market liquidity for bond issuance may affect credit and provoke liquidity squeezes.”

 

Erik Nielsen, chief economist of Italy’s UniCredit, noted that four consecutive quarters of negative global growth followed the 2008 financial crisis but said he expected the impact of coronavirus to last only a couple of quarters. But he also predicted that the quarterly fall could be as deep as the 3.2 per cent contraction that the global economy experienced in the first quarter of 2009.

 

Gilles Moec, chief economist at French insurer Axa, said that trying to plot the disruption from the virus was almost impossible. “Our forecasting models are not set up to deal with this scenario,” he said.

 

Pointing to the lack of large-scale virus testing in the US, Danny Blanchflower, a Dartmouth College professor, said: “The worst is yet to come . . . I assume consumer confidence is going to collapse.”